Blood on the Wood

by Gillian Linscott

  ‘What would it be worth?’

  This time I got an answer out of him, though it was given reluctantly and with many qualifications, but …

  ‘It could be as much as two thousand guineas. Possibly considerably more than that at auction if the Americans took an interest, as they tend to do these days.’

  ‘How can I get in touch with Mr Dent?’

  ‘I can assure you, it’s his work.’

  ‘I’m not doubting it. I just want to speak to him.’

  His eyebrows went up, but he sat down at his desk, consulted an address book, wrote something on a slip of paper.

  ‘His studio’s in Highgate.’

  I took the slip of paper, thanked him and turned to go.

  ‘Are you taking the picture with you?’

  I looked at her. It struck me for the first time that there was a hint of mockery in those wide eyes.

  ‘No. We’ll send for it.’

  * * *

  John Valentine Dent lived in a road leading to the Highgate bathing ponds, on the east side of Hampstead Heath. I went there by horse tram, not bothering to go back to Clement’s Inn first. Bad news would keep. There were two women on the lawn in front of the house playing with a plump baby on a rug, one of them in nursemaid’s uniform, the other presumably the lady of the house, though she looked no more than about twenty. I said I’d come to see Mr Dent, trying not to scare them by looking as angry as I felt.

  ‘He’s up there.’ She pointed to an open window on the first floor and raised her voice. ‘John, somebody to see you.’ Then, to me, ‘Do walk up. First on the right at the top of the stairs.’

  From the look of the house, Mr Dent was making a decent living from his copying. When I knocked on the first door on the right, a cheerful voice told me to come in. Mr Dent had a face like a friendly Afghan hound, bright brown eyes, sharp nose, blond wispy beard. He was standing by a still life of fruit with beetles and butterflies.

  ‘One hundred and thirty-four, not counting the spider.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Insects. I think some of the Old Masters enjoyed making life difficult for copyists.’

  He didn’t seem to need any introduction, but I told him who I was and mentioned I’d been given his name by the man at Christie’s.

  ‘Decent chap. Sends me clients occasionally. Are you one?’

  ‘No. I’ve come to ask about one of your other clients. A Mr Oliver Venn.’

  ‘Nice old boy. Is he well?’ he asked. But he was more intent on the picture, stepping back from it then making little darts at it all the time we were talking.

  ‘Look at that, now. Can you imagine the technique you need to paint a lacewing? You might say it looks simple enough, but one brushstroke wrong and…’

  ‘You did a copy for him. A Boucher.’

  ‘He showed you? One of the best things I ever did, although I say it myself.’

  ‘I’ve seen it, yes. When did you do it for him?’

  He had to stop and think about it.

  ‘June or July, it must have been. June, probably. I seem to remember the dog roses were out and the barley was still green.’

  ‘June this year?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Philomena had died in March.

  ‘You went to his home to copy it?’

  ‘Yes, some clients prefer that. I stayed there for ten days or so. Very hospitable they were too. Some places treat you like the man who’s come to see to the plumbing.’

  ‘Did he say why he wanted it copied?’

  ‘Not sure. I think I gathered he had to sell it or something and wanted a copy to keep. I get a lot of work that way – families feeling the pinch and having to keep up appearances. You have to be a bit discreet about these things, of course.’

  He was about as discreet as a five-year-old. I thanked him and left him still staring at the beetles and was sure that by the time I’d got to the tram stop he’d have forgotten he’d spoken to me. Now all I had to do was break the news to Emmeline.

  Chapter Three

  ‘PUT IT TO HIM, POLITELY BUT firmly, that there’s been a mistake and we want the original picture.’

  Emmeline had resisted the temptation to blame me this time, but made it clear that I was expected to sort out the mess.

  ‘I don’t think it was a mistake at all,’ I said. ‘That copy was made less than three months ago. He can’t have mixed them up already.’

  ‘No, Nell, of course he hasn’t. But we want this settled without gossip or bad feeling. We owe that to Philomena if nothing else.’

  ‘So you think if we give him an easy escape route, he’ll take it?’

  ‘Of course he will. I know Oliver Venn and he’s not entirely unreasonable. You might put it to him that if he wants to keep the original so much he can get Christie’s down to value it and we’ll take the money instead.’

  I suggested that since she knew him, he might listen to her rather than me. A waste of breath, like my alternative proposal that we should ask our solicitor to get in touch with the executor.

  ‘These things are better done the direct way. It might be best if you go down there tomorrow and take that with you.’

  A jerk of the chin towards the false Odalisque, back from Christie’s decently covered again in linen and brown paper and propped against the wall. I drew the line at that. The next day was Saturday. If I had to cancel my other plans for the weekend and travel back to the Cotswolds on a crowded train, I didn’t intend to do it with her sitting on my lap.

  * * *

  I was right about the crowds. Usually the trains in that direction shed most of their passengers at Oxford, with only farmers and weekend hikers going on to the Cotswolds, but this one went on its way more than half full and the talk that came to me in snatches, over the noise of the train toiling up the gradient, wasn’t about sheep or footpaths.

  ‘The problem with you syndicalists is you assume that revolution is going to come automatically…’

  ‘The eight-hour day isn’t the be-all and end-all, it’s only the start of it.’

  ‘The future of the International Labour Party…’

  There was some singing too, drifting from the third-class carriages on the warm air in a blue haze of cheap cigarette smoke. The passengers were mostly working-class young men in cheap best suits, jackets unbuttoned over dark waistcoats, shirts open at the neck or flaunting bright red ties. There were a few young women too, quieter than the men and with the determined look of people who’ve been taking on the world at unreasonable odds from the time they first stood upright. The luggage nets bulged with faded haversacks, rolled tarpaulins and battered suitcases made of brown-painted cardboard. In spite of the political talk, there was a holiday atmosphere with people shouting out joking insults or pointing out of the windows at the view as if they’d never been in the countryside before, which some of them probably hadn’t. I’d obviously found the Scipians and they seemed to me cheerful company – more cheerful at any rate than the few hours ahead of me once we got to the halt for the Venns’ house.

  * * *

  We changed trains together at the junction and when we spilled out at the local halt the porter took one look at the Scipians and vanished, judging rightly that there were no shillings to spare among this lot. With a lot of laughter and loud enquiries to each other about the route, they got haversacks on to their backs, and with cases in hand and tarpaulins over their shoulders they moved in an irregular crocodile up the road between the harvest fields. There was a particularly jolly group of girls with London accents who were singing more tunefully than the rest. When one of them accidentally dropped her haversack a muffled chime came from it, delicate as a breeze in a chandelier.

  ‘Three bobs’ worth of bells in there and she’s just chucking them around,’ one of the others said.

  They formed into an impromptu morris line and danced away up the road, packs bobbing on their backs, feet kicking up the dust. I picked up my bag, more glad than ever that I had
n’t brought the Odalisque back with me, and followed. Ahead of me, a man was bending to adjust his boot. I said good morning as I passed and he straightened up.

  ‘Miss Bray, I didn’t know you’d joined the Scipians.’

  Tall thin frame, black hair and neat beard, profile like a benevolent hawk.

  ‘Max Blume. What are you doing here?’

  ‘Observing, as usual. Are you here for their summer school?’

  Max was a friend from several years back, a freelance journalist and ferocious chess player. He scraped a living of sorts writing articles for left-wing newspapers and magazines which all too often went out of existence before they got round to paying him.

  ‘No, I haven’t joined. What do you know about them?’

  ‘Interesting lot, mostly the younger and more left-wing generation. A fair bit of support from socialist students at Oxford and Cambridge, but mainly workers from the North and Midlands. Some London garment trade too, as you see.’

  ‘Why Scipians?’

  ‘Haven’t you worked that out? You know the Fabians are named after Fabius Cunctator?’

  The Roman general famous for delaying battles rather than fighting them. The timid Fabians all over.

  ‘H.G. Wells told them they’d got the wrong general. They should have chosen Scipio, who fought battles and won them. The younger lot, and a few of the disgruntled seniors, took him at his word – so there you are.’ A sweep of his long, flannel-shirted arm took in the column winding up the hill in front of us.

  ‘Then,’ he said, ‘Harry Hawthorne’s coming. He’ll be the main attraction.’

  Of all the quarrelsome political family, Harry Hawthorne was the liveliest and least predictable. He was the son of a Methodist preacher and had exhausted most of the available political organisations, from Liberal, through International Labour, communist, anarchist, socialist, syndicalist and even briefly Fabian (until he got thrown out by them for trying to settle debates with fists instead of statistics). In his forty years or so of life he’d been a fairground prize fighter, docker, steel worker, and deckhand. Above all, he was simply the best public speaker I’d ever heard. When Harry was on form, you expected the very stones to rise up and build themselves into the New Jerusalem.

  ‘Quite a coup for the Scipians to get Harry,’ I said.

  ‘More like Harry getting the Scipians. He’s up to something as usual and I’d like to know what.’

  Which partly explained why Max, who was no enthusiast for rural life, had bothered to make the trip to the Cotswolds.

  ‘Any suspicions?’

  ‘Only that it’s something financial to do with the Venns.’

  I said nothing but must have made some surprised movement that alerted him.

  ‘You know them?’

  ‘A little.’

  Max might be a friend of mine and our cause, but he was a journalist, after all. I asked him why the Scipians had chosen this place for their camp.

  ‘It’s on Oliver Venn’s estate. You know he’s a dyed-in-the-wool old Fabian?’ I could think of a lot worse things to call him than that, so just nodded. ‘Anyway, he’s got a nephew called Daniel, a composer who seems to think he’s a revolutionary. Daniel’s fallen head over heels in love with the Scipians and invited them to camp in some old buildings on his uncle’s estate. Not sure what Oliver Venn thinks about it, but I suppose he’s having to put up with it.’

  ‘What’s Oliver’s background?’

  ‘Made his pile on the Stock Exchange back in the eighties, then discovered a social conscience, though that was probably his wife’s influence as much as anything. You know about Philomena, of course. Would I be right in guessing that your presence here has something to do with her?’

  No point in denying it. He could look up the will if he wanted to.

  ‘Philomena left us quite a valuable picture,’ I said. ‘I’m here to make the arrangements.’

  He didn’t comment. Ahead of us the rest of the column had turned right through a gateway and was walking along a track beside a wood.

  ‘It looks as if we part here. Should I wish you luck?’

  ‘Can’t do any harm. Enjoy the camp.’

  He probably would, in spite of the countryside. Eight hours of political discussion would be Max’s idea of a day well spent and he’d be capable of finding somebody to play chess with on an Arctic ice floe, let alone among all that earnest youth. I waved to him and went on up the hill to the house, wishing I’d had time to draw him out on Harry Hawthorne’s interest in the Venns. This time, although the sun was on the house again and the stonework glowing as before, I liked it less. Smug and privileged, it seemed to me, curled up round its secret. I’d worked up a useful head of anger against Oliver Venn by the time I was ringing the doorbell.

  * * *

  It was wasted. I could feel it oozing away like seawater from a beached jellyfish once in the atmosphere of that well-ordered household. The maid opened the door to me, entirely polite although I’d given them no warning I was coming. Would I care to wait while she went up and told Mr Venn I was here? She put me in the studio and while I was there Felicia Foster came running in, fresh and cool in a pale green dress with a broad ribbon belt, an annoyed look on her face.

  ‘Daniel, you might have—’ She stopped short when she saw me. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I heard Annie opening the front door and I thought it was him at last. He was supposed to be back yesterday but he loses all sense of time when he’s out collecting.’

  She sounded more like a bossy sister than a girl longing for her lover’s return but she recovered and went into hostess mode. Had Annie offered me tea? Mr Venn would be down in a minute. She made no attempt to find out what I wanted with him or why I was back so soon, uninvited. I’d been wondering if the rest of the family knew about Oliver Venn’s deception and thought probably not. Steps in the hall. She stood up, said she’d leave me with Mr Venn and whisked out in a swirl of cotton and lace.

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Bray. It’s nice to see you again.’

  But Oliver Venn’s face said something else entirely. He knew the game was up.

  I said politely but firmly, following Emmeline’s instructions, ‘I’m afraid there seems to have been a mistake.’

  * * *

  Stubbornness I know about. If you’re in the campaigning business you come to recognise all varieties of it. Emmeline’s stubbornness, simply refusing to accept that things won’t arrange themselves the way she wants them. The padded stubbornness of a statesman (Tory or Liberal variety, they’re each as bad as the other) whose family hasn’t changed its mind in three generations and sees no reason to start now. The bone-headed stubbornness of somebody who believes what his daily paper tells him and won’t hear otherwise. Oliver Venn’s stubbornness was a new kind to me. He sat there on the fruit and leaf patterned sofa in his old smoking jacket with ink stains on his fingers, listened courteously to what I was saying and denied everything. Denied it as if the whole thing had happened in a different universe and it concerned him only because I would insist on talking about it. Round one, he flatly denied that the picture was a copy.

  ‘Christie’s say so.’

  A wave of his plump little hand dismissed Christie’s.

  ‘I’ve actually spoken to the man who copied it, John Valentine Dent. He stayed in this house and did it just a few weeks ago.’

  Widening eyes and a brief pursing of the lips suggested I was guilty of bad taste.

  ‘I can see that it was hard for you to part with the picture, but we’re sure we could come to some arrangement about that. If you could invite the man from Christie’s down here…’

  A small shake of the head.

  ‘Well, what do you suggest, then?’

  So it was round two and he went on the attack, if you could call anything an attack that came in such a gentle, regretful voice, with a tear trickling down his smooth old cheek. Philomena would have been so distressed by this. All she’d wanted was for us to have a nice picture to ha
ng on our wall. He didn’t see why we had to haul it off to an auctioneer, make this – he had to say it – this rather mercenary fuss about things. It almost worked, too. I started feeling grubby, penny-pinching. Why not leave this gentle old man in peace with his picture after all? I pulled myself together and reminded him that there’d been only a half-joking remark from his late wife about hanging the picture on the wall. She must have seen how inappropriate it would be so in the will she’d left it to the movement outright, no conditions on what we did with it. For all the impression that made, I might as well have been talking to a sad stuffed owl. In round three, I tried to appeal to his political instincts. The money the WSPU would get from selling the real picture would fund an expansion of our campaigning work that might even bring the Vote at last. Wouldn’t that be a monument to his late wife more splendid than any picture ever painted? For a moment, I thought I’d won.

  ‘Very well, you have my permission to sell it.’

  ‘So we can send and collect it?’

  I wasn’t going to take it home on the train this time, not now I knew how valuable it was. He stared.

  ‘But you have it already.’

  I had to take a firm grip on the chair arm – carved vine leaves and tendrils – to stop myself yelling out in sheer frustration.

  ‘I’ve told you, the one we’ve got is Dent’s copy.’

  ‘Never trust an art dealer, my dear lady. Never trust an art dealer.’

  So we came to the next impossible scenario, delivered with the occasional chuckle this time at the theoretical sharp dealing of Christie’s and my naivety in expecting anything else.

  ‘You’ve told me you left the picture with them overnight. What was to prevent their substituting a copy and spiriting the original across the Channel to sell for a good profit? I shouldn’t be surprised if poor Philomena’s picture isn’t on an easel at some Parisian art dealer’s even as we speak.’

  I could have gone on arguing, pointed out that even the most shifty art dealer couldn’t have got a good copy painted and dried in less than twenty-four hours, but I knew there would be no point. Oliver Venn was becoming more confident as the discussion went on, convinced that he’d won and we could do nothing about it. I stood up, told him I’d let myself out. That at least seemed to disconcert him for a moment.